


the written word

by 11oyd



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes's Notebooks, Dreams, Memory Loss, PTSD, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Trauma, the notebooks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:26:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7610845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11oyd/pseuds/11oyd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His hands shaking, Bucky flips frantically through the first notebook to the very middle where two pages lay side by side, both wrinkled and well-worn. One side says, in childish scrawl, I AM NOT A MONSTER. The other side, with darker, harsher letters, says, THE MONSTER IS HERE TODAY. There is a series of tally marks under both sides, a record of the past months. There's 82 ragged lines under the first page. There's 99 under the second.</p><p>With a tremor shaking his arm, he takes out an ink pen and adds the hundredth mark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the written word

**Author's Note:**

> so everyone probably knows this, but for those that don't, Sebastian Stan was quoted saying that Bucky kept a series of notebooks in his backpack in Civil War where he wrote down the fragmented memories he could somehow still remember, just like a patient with Alzheimer's; this is based off that.

His hands shaking, Bucky flips frantically through the first notebook to the very middle where two pages lay side by side, both wrinkled and well-worn. One side says, in childish scrawl, _I AM NOT A MONSTER._ The other side, with darker, harsher letters, says, _THE MONSTER IS HERE TODAY._ There is a series of tally marks under both sides, a record of the past months. There's 82 ragged lines under the first page. There's 99 under the second.

With a tremor shaking his arm, he takes out an ink pen and adds the hundredth mark.

 

 

There are two large notebooks and one small notebook. When they're not in his backpack, they're in a hole under the floorboard, tied together with twine. Sometimes he takes them out, not to read them, but to simply run his fingers over the pages, soft and waterlogged from the times he's been caught in a downpour with his backpack and no umbrella; they are a memorial to who he is, to who he was, to who he might be tomorrow.

The small notebook is black, and the first page says, _He called you his friend._ That's all it says on that page, and it makes Bucky's throat feel tight to look at it, his eyes hot. What a stupid idiot. What a goddamn stupid idiot, head up his ass. He gathers all the notebooks in his arms, holding them gingerly to his chest and looking up.

No one can take them from him. They're his, they're the pieces of him that he can afford to write down in whatever language he's thinking in that day. Perhaps it is a mistake, to leave paper trailings of the Winter Soldier, but no one is keeping tabs on Bucky Barnes any more, no one cares. Anyway, they're all he has somedays, when his mind feels muddled and sloppy, like someone's gone inside and torn everything down. He'd gotten a tattoo from a sullen looking girl in a dark, flea-infested room in one of the seedier parts of Bucharest - right there on his wrist, tattooed in his own handwriting so he knows it's true, Don't you think you want something neater? she had asked, No, this is what I want, just this, he'd said, it says, _Read the notebooks_.

Sometimes it's like: Wake up, groggy, panic-stricken but trying to suppress it, heart is racing, roll off the bundle of blankets on the floor and reach for the weapon strapped to your thigh, glance down to check its condition and see - _Notebooks._

Sometimes it's like: Sitting cross-legged with your arm lying on your thigh, touching the tattoo with metal fingers, softly stroking the black letters embedded forever. Does he even want to remember? Does it matter?

Sometimes he simply curls up into himself, face to his knees, arms wrapped around his legs, trying to make himself small, smaller.

 

 

_You have murdered people. You have ruined lives._

_You have been erased and rewritten. There are words in you that are not your own, but the blood is still yours._

_Your hands will not shake when you hold a gun._

 

 

He tests it out. He has sixteen guns hidden around his apartment - he's not really sure where they all came from, but he instinctively knows exactly where they're all located. He takes one out, leaves Bucharest, travels to the outskirts of the city, past the crowds of people. He takes the gun to a field and then to a forest and lays in wait all day, like a statue growing moss.

The doe comes by at two in the afternoon, while the sweat is gathering in the lower regions of his back. His mouth is parched, his hair damp, but when he aims the rifle in the direction of the doe and pulls the trigger, his hands do not quiver at all.

Around the apartment, they shake when he tries to write or clean or shave; it's too dangerous to bring a razor anywhere near his face and he's been growing a beard for two weeks now. He doesn't mind that so much if it makes him look less like himself. The red notebook is the one for blood, for all the crimes he committed as the Winter Soldier. He writes in it that day, _The doe did not to deserve to die. Your hands did not shake when you closed her eyes._

He writes in it after the nightmares, after he wakes up gasping for air.

 

 

_slit her throat. you right in front of her kid. right in front of her fucking kid, blood everywhere on your hands and after on your face when you look in the mirror and you smeared it when you were trying to get it off and the kid was just standing there watching you clean off in the bathroom he said "Are you going to kill me too" and you didnt even answer_

_The orders were not yours but the blood is still yours. the blood is still fucking yours. And the answers are still yours._

 

 

He doesn't like reading the red one very often. The blue one is for James Buchanan Barnes. He doesn't like reading that one very often either.

 

 

_Sister - Rebecca? Becky? Brown? Tiny feet, she laughs when you tickle them, she's small she needs protecting_

_you dance_

_you dont like to be alone, not when you could be with someone else, the aloneness doesn't work with the way your head is. Too empty, too big and the silence is too great. youve always been the weaker one, who needs more than others. Its only by fighting that youre strong, shooting from long distances, ripping their throats out with your bare hands_

_Not good at math_

 

 

Bucky does small things to make himself feel stronger. He talks to the old Romanian lady at the market, answers her simple questions, sometimes attempts to make his mouth into a smile for her (though it doesn't always work). He knows he can't become James Buchanan Barnes again all at once, but maybe he can do it slowly, one button at a time until he's presentable.

And when he's finally presentable, then maybe… But he stops himself from going too far with his daydreams. He chides himself for it, for imagining a warm person who sweeps his hair back and maybe presses soft kisses to his forehead. There's a part of him, this Soldier, who doesn't quite deserve it yet, but he's trying to earn it, he is.

He's not sure if the dreams he has are real memories or not; they feel crystal clear to him, like he's standing in 1938 and he's twenty years old and the ground is real underneath his feet. He doesn't know if they're true, so he writes them down in the back of the blue notebook, hidden and secret and a hopeful wish that he can't say out loud yet.

 

 

_You're with your ma in the bathroom and she's cutting your hair again, "It always gets so long so quickly," she says, her accent is like piano music in your head, tinkling and gentle. "If you didn't have to have it cut short for school, I might just let you grow it out."_

" _Please, Ma," you beg, feels like a privilege and you want it. "Summer? What about for summer? They don't care if it gets below the collar when school's not even in business."_

_Her smile looks just like yours. "I'll think about it, Jamie."_

_She calls you Jamie. (Is that real?) Your teachers call you James when they're trying to be stern. Everyone else calls you Bucky. There's one boy that calls you Buck, so fondly_

" _Ma," You say, reaching up to catch her fingers with yours._

 

 

That's it. That's the dream. When he wakes up, his fingers are clenching and relaxing and clenching, like he's trying to really touch something. In the dream, he could feel the way the pads of her fingertips felt soft against his.

Bucky lays with his head on the flat little pillow he got from a thrift shop, staring up at the ceiling with his heart in his throat. _Ma_ , he mouths to himself. Feels right. Feels like it might be real. He rolls over onto his side and closes his eyes again, wishing himself back to it. These are the dreams that go in the blue notebook. There are others for the red and the black, but those are the sort that make him whimper through his teeth even as he wakes up, so he tries not to think about them.

The black notebook is for -

Well, the black notebook is filled with him, of course. 

 

 

_Blond_

_Blue eyes_

_Blue like shining in the sky_

_Blue like lake sprawling out reflecting_

_Smiles like sharp. Smiles like soft, sometimes, when you are good, try to be good. Good is like helping people, no prejudice, defend the small, he used to be small, his fragile wrists encircled by your hands._

_TRUST HIM._

 

 

But Bucky doesn't understand how to trust anyone any more. Even the old lady at the market that gets him to smile sometimes, he looks at her still with guarded eyes and flinches when she gets too close. The red notebook is proof that anyone can hurt anyone, that at any moment a murderous knife-wielding assassin could come in and destroy everything you've ever known. The blue notebook is proof that he is not yet a person who deserves a family and a life like the one he used to have, that Bucky is gone. The black notebook is… the black notebook hurts him and heals him.

He sits in a park, alone, holding it in his hands as he looks out. His metal thumb rubs a circle against the matte cover, stroking. Inside are poorly drawn pictures of Steve - Steve in bed, Steve in battle. They're not nearly as good as he wants them to be, but when he looks at them he feels a flicker of heat that he doesn't feel any other time; the Winter Soldier has been encased in ice for far too long.

He breathes out slow as he holds his notebook.

 

 

 _Your mouth on Steve's. It's so soft to kiss him, like there's barely any pressure there but you can still feel it so much. Did this happen?_ _Did this happen?_ _He's small under you and then large over you and in both times he looks at you like you're his Bucky, like you never went through anything painful because he was always there to protect you from it._

_He takes your face in his hands, they are the same size no matter what size the rest of him is - too big when he was small, like puppy paws he hasn't grown into yet - and he holds you like you're a treasure. He says your name, he says, "Bucky," in this quiet way, he doesn't need to say it any louder than that. He knows you'll always be listening out for it._

_You want to open your mouth and say, "It's me, I'm here," but you can't say anything. You can't even breathe out. Your whole body is stopped up, frozen, trying to keep this moment from ever changing._

" _It's okay," he whispers. "I won't tell anyone," and he leans in again._

_(Is this real?)_

 

 

That's the one that makes him wake up gasping. He fucking hates it. He takes the three notebooks, he grips them hard in his hands, he goes out of his shitty apartment, down the six flights of stairs, stomps to the garbage can and tries to throw them away but he can't, he fucking can't. He's sobbing because of how god damn pathetic he is and his entire life has boiled down to three shitty notebooks of questions and wonderings.

He holds them out like he's about to do it, just throw them away, when a loose piece of paper flutters out of one of them and lands at his feet. A drawing that he didn't do, it's better than the ones he made, he can see that even from here, and Bucky bends, picking it up with his real hand like it might injure him.

Slowly he straightens, staring down at it.

It's drawn in pencil (he remembers that from before, he remembers buying the best pencils he could afford for a boy who accepts it both eagerly and reluctantly), sharp lines, almost haphazard; Steve and Bucky, young, they have their arms around each other like they're about to fall over laughing. It makes everything tighten up inside Bucky because he doesn't remember this scene, but he wants to.

And then his eyes flicker to the bottom and he reads in unfamiliar handwriting, _I'm here when you can't get it all. You don't have to be alone, Bucky._

His hand crinkles the paper, gripping too tight, and he looks up and around as though Steve's about to walk out to greet him right now. When did he slip it in? Did he see anything else in the journals or just open one randomly and slot it inside? Why didn't he come to Bucky directly?

But looking back down at it, he knows why Steve didn't come directly. Because Bucky is still figuring this out, Bucky is still pressing at the edges of himself to try and understand who he could be and who he used to be and who he might be in the future.

He takes the notebooks back inside. The small black one is almost full; he might have to get another one for Steve, but for now he opens it up to the end, so carefully, and writes something in as neat of handwriting as he can manage at the top of the page:

 

 

_He will not abandon you._


End file.
